Sawahlunto. Towards a Sustainable and Attractive Place to Live, Work and Recreate
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Sawahlunto Towards a Sustainable and Attractive Place to Live, Work and Recreate Sawahlunto Towards a Sustainable and Attractive Place to Live, Work and Recreate Colophon Department: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands Ministry of Education Culture and Science Project name: Shared Cultural Heritage Programme Built Environment Future Perspectives on World Heritage City Sawahlunto Version: 1.0 Date: March 2020 Contact: Jean-Paul Corten [email protected] Authors: Grace Emely, Vince Gebert Editing: Jean-Paul Corten Language editing: Taalcentrum Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Photo’s: Authors, unless mentioned diferently Design and print: Xerox/Osage, the Netherlands Photo cover: Part of the listed railway track near Padang Panjang, 2019 © Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Amersfoort 2020 Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands P.O. Box 1600 3800 BP Amersfoort The Netherlands www.cultureelerfgoed.nl Table of Contents Preface 5 Foreword 7 Chapter 1. The town of Sawahlunto 9 Chapter 2. Research outline 13 2.1 Problem statement 13 2.2 Tourism 14 2.3 Medical care 14 2.4 Mining 15 2.5 Research design and methods 15 Chapter 3. Present situation 17 3.1 Tourism 17 3.2 Medical care 18 3.3 Mining 19 Chapter 4. Future challenges 21 4.1 Challenges with respect to tourism 21 4.2 Challenges with respect to medical care 25 4.3 Challenges with respect to mining 26 Chapter 5. Conclusion 29 Chapter 6. Recommen dations 31 The authors 33 References 34 View on Sawahlunto Preface 5 — The Netherlands share a past with many countries with up-to-date expertise, but also acquires new around the globe. The traces lef by this past, both within knowledge that can be applied back home. Mutual and outside the Netherlands, are referred to as shared interests are expected to lead to long-term collaboration. heritage. Through its Shared Heritage programme, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) works This report presents the results of a study of the towards a sustainable future for (shared) heritage with development potential of Sawahlunto. The study has ten partner countries. Indonesia, evidently, is one of been executed by Vince Gebert and Grace Emely, these partner countries. commissioned by the RCE and as part of an ongoing cooperation with the town of Sawahlunto within the Within the Shared Heritage Programme the RCE shares Shared Heritage programme. The former mining town expertise, provides training and develops tools. By and the RCE have a longstanding cooperation, starting in means of knowledge exchange we aim at a vital future 2004 shortly afer the coal mines were closed. The joint for the cherished heritage in an ever changing society. cooperation intensifed during the process of world We work in close collaboration with our partner countries heritage listing of Swahlunto’s coal mining heritage. and with Dutch parties within a wide international I hope this report will be helpful to the local parties in network. Built environment is one of the three felds their conservation eforts and that it may provide a base covered within the Shared Heritage programme (next to for further cooperation. maritime archaeology and museum collections). The RCE focuses on issues that are of social relevance and that are urgent in both the partner countries and the Netherlands. Jean-Paul Corten Examples are urban management and water challenges. senior policy ofcer In doing so, the RCE not only provides partner countries Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands Coal elevator Foreword 7 — The town of Sawahlunto was established under Dutch assessed the potential for a sustainable and vital town so colonial rule following the discovery of an abundance of as to re-create an atractive place to live, work and spend minable coal in the Sumatran highlands above Padang, in leisure time. On 3 July 2019 various stakeholders in the late the 19th century. Once the frst buildings and Sawahlunto atended a one-day workshop. While the essential facilities had been built in 1887, developments study was ongoing, the Ombilin Coal Mining Heritage of over the next decades led the company town to fourish. Sawahlunto was successfully listed as Indonesia’s ninth However, since the mines’ closure in 2002 Sawahlunto’s World Heritage Site during the 43rd session of the World existence base has gradually melted away. The physical Heritage Commitee, held in Baku on 6 July 2019. remains, however, have remained largely intact. The former mining complex encompasses not only the young The UNESCO listing was the ultimate result of constant town itself but also extraction sites and coal storage eforts by the late mayor of Sawahlunto, the honourable facilities, as well as export facilities at the port of Amran Nur. As early as in 2004 the newly elected mayor Emmahaven, and the railway network linking the mines expressed his concerns regarding the town’s weak to coastal facilities. economic position following the termination of mining activities. In response the municipality drafed a new This report presents the results of a study of potential development policy based on heritage conservation and future prospects for these remains in the former mining mining-based tourism, which became the city’s new town of Sawahlunto. The study was conducted by Grace vision for the future. Emely and Vince Gebert for the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), in close collaboration with involved Grace Emely parties in Indonesia, between 1 and 8 July 2019. The study Vince Gebert Railway bridge Chapter 1. The town of Sawahlunto 9 — The town of Sawahlunto, in the Indonesian province of By early 1894, the Ombilin mines near Sawahlunto had West Sumatra, is located in a narrow and isolated valley become geographically and logistically connected to the in the mountainous Ombilin region, ca. 90km east of the coastal facilities at Emmahaven, the port of Padang municipality of Padang. Sawahlunto is surrounded by (today Teluk Bayur seaport) by a railway network that ran three administrative territories, Tanah Datar, Solok, and via Solok, Padang Panjang and Lubuk Alung. This railway Sijunjung. Initially founded as a company town in which connection was the main route for the transportation of all urban functions revolved around coal extraction, coal from the Ombilin mines to the seaport, from where today Sawahlunto covers a total area of 273,45km² and it was shipped to Tanjung Priok, the port of the city of has a population of ca. 60,000. Batavia, and on to Europe. Cluysenaer’s plan was crucial for the mining operations, and he setlement rapidly The history of Sawahlunto’s coal mining dates back to the expanded. Housing was provided for staf and mine late 19th century. When in 1868 the interior of West employees, as were essential services such as canteens, Sumatra proved to contain an almost inexhaustible supply health care facilities, schools, religious institutions, of high-quality coal, the Dutch colonial government set a sports feld, and other recreational facilities including a out to extract and process the coal seams in the Ombilin social club. Newly built central storage facilities near the region. These eforts were hampered by the remoteness of city were linked to the remote mining pits by a railway the area, and access was further complicated by the high track and conveyor belts. Within several decades mountain ridges which surround it. To enable exploitation Sawahlunto developed into a thriving coal-mining of the coal mines Jacobus Leonardus Cluysenaer (1843- centre. The Ombilin coal mining complex represents an 1932), a Delf-educated Dutch civil engineer, devised an innovative system of deep-pit mining, which requires integral plan to link the highlands to the port city of considerable technological knowledge and capital Padang, on the west coast of Sumatra, by a railway investment. Though the Ombilin coal mines were neither network. The only feasible method to do this was by the only nor the frst to be operated by the Dutch colonial means of the newly invented rack railway. From 1887 government, by 1898 they already constituted the largest onwards the railway system, mines, and port were under mining operation and for a long time contributed most of construction and the frst buildings arose, creating the the Netherlands Indies’ coal production. company town of Sawahlunto. The panorama of Sawahlunto from Bukit Pari (KITLV Collections) 10 — Map of Indonesia, showing the province of West Sumatra (Rizky Fardhyan, 2019) Map of West Sumatra, showing the listed World Heritage Property (Ofce of Cultural Afairs, Historical Remains and Museum, 2017) 11 — Transport of coal using at the Loento II Mining Pit (KITLV Collections) The complex combination of local geological knowledge rising demand by the colonial power, leaving only and the technical expertise of the Dutch engineers seventeen days of rest on a total of 183. Moreover, (criterium ii), and its status as an outstanding example of almost every employee struggled with parasitic mine a unique technological complex (criterium iv) gained worm infestations as a result of unhygienic conditions Sawahlunto a successful listing as a World Heritage Site. and contaminated drinking water. Added to this were the many injuries, as the colonial administration would not Labour conditions in the late 19th and early 20th-century provide dredge boots, and let the workers go barefoot. At Sawahlunto colonial mines were quite harsh. The labour the time, Sawahlunto was known as ‘Hell on Earth’, but force largely consisted of deported convicts known as these inhuman forms of labour under horrible conditions orang rantai (chained people), who were disciplined by a remained very much underreported (Drieënhuizen, 2019). colonial system of institutionalized violence.... This modern form of slavery began in the late 19th century with 1,234 miners and expanded to 11,046 workers in 1921, with a small proportion of Javanese and Chinese contract workers.